LaVar's Favorite
Draper Republican Rep. LaVar Christensen hasn't entered a legislative debate yet where his favorite court case won't fit.
"The Lofton Case," as he calls it, works equally well in legislative debates about abortion, child welfare bills or his own legislation that would nullify gay couples' custody agreements.
A little background: Steven Lofton, a foster parent and pediatric nurse who also happens to be gay, tried unsuccessfully to adopt one of eight HIV-positive foster children he has cared for.
While the case only seems to be topical in discussions about gay rights, Christensen pulls it out as an all-purpose repudiation of that oft-mentioned legislative straw man -- "judicial activism."
Invariably, he reads this quote from the appeals court: "The legislature is the proper forum for this debate, and we do not sit as a super-legislature to award by judicial decree what was not achievable by political consensus."
The good news is that unlike Christensen's oratorical flights of fancy in past years, the recitation is always brief.
-- Rebecca Walsh
"The Lofton Case," as he calls it, works equally well in legislative debates about abortion, child welfare bills or his own legislation that would nullify gay couples' custody agreements.
A little background: Steven Lofton, a foster parent and pediatric nurse who also happens to be gay, tried unsuccessfully to adopt one of eight HIV-positive foster children he has cared for.
While the case only seems to be topical in discussions about gay rights, Christensen pulls it out as an all-purpose repudiation of that oft-mentioned legislative straw man -- "judicial activism."
Invariably, he reads this quote from the appeals court: "The legislature is the proper forum for this debate, and we do not sit as a super-legislature to award by judicial decree what was not achievable by political consensus."
The good news is that unlike Christensen's oratorical flights of fancy in past years, the recitation is always brief.
-- Rebecca Walsh
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